Barack Obama is now the Democratic Party's frontrunner for America's next President. In a race that he was not even expected to be a serious contender, Obama, the junior Senator from Illinois, has impressed America by his stirring message of hope and change.
Shortly before undertaking his campaign for the crucial March 4 Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas, Obama wrote this exclusive article for India Abroad, the oldest and largest circulated Indian-American newsweekly, which is owned by rediff.com.
Sources within the Obama campaign said the Senator had been working on the article for weeks, in concert with close friends and supporters within the Indian-American community, to ensure that he produced a comprehensive articulation of his policies on the various key issues confronting the United States today.
Obama finally signed off on the article last week, immediately after extending his winning streak over New York Senator Hillary Clinton to ten straight wins with sweeping majorities in Wisconsin and Hawaii.
Mar 7, 2008
Stop smoking or an early death awaits you
Health Minister Ambumani Ramadoss may ask Shah Rukh Khan [Images] not to smoke in public and many offices may have banished smokers from puffing indoors but India confronts a smoking epidemic.
During the decade beginning 2010, a new study says smoking will cause about 930,000 adult deaths in India annually; of the dead, about 70 per cent will be between the ages of 30 and 69 years.
"People should know smoking is a huge killer and the cause of 10 per cent of all deaths in India. A male cigarette smoker will lose 10 years of his life compared to a non-smoker. A female beedi smoker will lose 8 years of life while a male beedi smoker will die about 6 years earlier," says Dr Prabhat Jha, Director, Centre for Global Health Research, University of Toronto, and the principal investigator of the study on smoking and death in India.
What is alarming is that smoking is responsible for about 1 in 20 deaths in women and 1 in 5 deaths in men between the ages of 30 and 69 in India. About 5 per cent women and 37 per cent men in India between the ages of 30 and 69 years are smokers. In this age group, smoking was associated with an increased risk of death from any medical cause.
120 million smokers -- almost 10 per cent of the world's smokers -- live in India.
While smoking has been on the rise in India, in most Western countries it has declined as a result of high taxes, strong warning labels, effective ban on advertisement and smoke-free work places and public places.
"The Indian public does not know, especially the poor and illiterate, and neither manufacturers nor the government is telling them anything about the consequences of tobacco use," says Dr Prakash C Gupta, Director, Healis-Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, Mumbai, and one of the co-authors of the report.
"The price of tobacco products in real terms (adjusted for inflation) has gone down. Even though direct advertisements of tobacco products are banned, surrogate advertisement and promotional activities have increased tremendously," he says.
Though awareness is higher among the educated and smoking in this group is comparatively lower, studies reveal the educated are also not convinced anything will happen to them.
"The risk is much higher in middle aged smokers. Even anything as small between 1 to 7 cigarettes a day increases the risk. Among those who smoked only 1 to 7 cigarettes a day, smoking-associated excess deaths accounted for almost half of the deaths from any medical cause," Dr Jha told rediff.com on the telephone, while on a visit to India.
Dr Jha, a Rhodes Scholar, served at the World Bank and the World Health Organisation before joining the Centre for Global Health Research, Toronto. His family migrated to Canada [Images] from Ranchi in 1971.
India passed a law to print pictorial warnings on cigarette packs in 2003 as recommended by the World Health Organisation -- particularly to spread awareness in rural India -- but legal wrangles have delayed the measure so far. The law, which was to be implemented in 2006, has not come into force yet.
"Unfortunately, this measure is getting postponed and weakened for nearly two years without implementation. First, the skull and bones sign was made so-called 'optional' and now pictures are being revised because one of our ministers thinks they were 'repulsive'," Dr Gupta said in an e-mailed interview.
In countries like South Africa, picture warnings have worked and anti-tobacco activists feel it would have a similar impact in India.
The new study is the first nationally conducted survey and made world headlines when it was published on February 13 in the New England Journal of Medicine. For the research 900 field workers traveled to 1.1 million homes in all parts of India. The smoking habits of 74,000 smokers who died between 2001 and 2003 was compared to 78,000 existing smokers. The study was carried out by a team of 12 doctors from India, Canada and Great Britain.
The reason why there is such a high rate of deaths in India in spite of the fact that Indians start smoking later than American and Europeans is because Indians have a high rate of TB in rural areas and heart attacks in urban areas that accounts for deaths due to smoking.
"Stopping smoking can be highly effective but only 2% adults quit smoking in India," says Dr Jha. "The best way forward is for people to understand the risk. People should support tobacco control
During the decade beginning 2010, a new study says smoking will cause about 930,000 adult deaths in India annually; of the dead, about 70 per cent will be between the ages of 30 and 69 years.
"People should know smoking is a huge killer and the cause of 10 per cent of all deaths in India. A male cigarette smoker will lose 10 years of his life compared to a non-smoker. A female beedi smoker will lose 8 years of life while a male beedi smoker will die about 6 years earlier," says Dr Prabhat Jha, Director, Centre for Global Health Research, University of Toronto, and the principal investigator of the study on smoking and death in India.
What is alarming is that smoking is responsible for about 1 in 20 deaths in women and 1 in 5 deaths in men between the ages of 30 and 69 in India. About 5 per cent women and 37 per cent men in India between the ages of 30 and 69 years are smokers. In this age group, smoking was associated with an increased risk of death from any medical cause.
120 million smokers -- almost 10 per cent of the world's smokers -- live in India.
While smoking has been on the rise in India, in most Western countries it has declined as a result of high taxes, strong warning labels, effective ban on advertisement and smoke-free work places and public places.
"The Indian public does not know, especially the poor and illiterate, and neither manufacturers nor the government is telling them anything about the consequences of tobacco use," says Dr Prakash C Gupta, Director, Healis-Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, Mumbai, and one of the co-authors of the report.
"The price of tobacco products in real terms (adjusted for inflation) has gone down. Even though direct advertisements of tobacco products are banned, surrogate advertisement and promotional activities have increased tremendously," he says.
Though awareness is higher among the educated and smoking in this group is comparatively lower, studies reveal the educated are also not convinced anything will happen to them.
"The risk is much higher in middle aged smokers. Even anything as small between 1 to 7 cigarettes a day increases the risk. Among those who smoked only 1 to 7 cigarettes a day, smoking-associated excess deaths accounted for almost half of the deaths from any medical cause," Dr Jha told rediff.com on the telephone, while on a visit to India.
Dr Jha, a Rhodes Scholar, served at the World Bank and the World Health Organisation before joining the Centre for Global Health Research, Toronto. His family migrated to Canada [Images] from Ranchi in 1971.
India passed a law to print pictorial warnings on cigarette packs in 2003 as recommended by the World Health Organisation -- particularly to spread awareness in rural India -- but legal wrangles have delayed the measure so far. The law, which was to be implemented in 2006, has not come into force yet.
"Unfortunately, this measure is getting postponed and weakened for nearly two years without implementation. First, the skull and bones sign was made so-called 'optional' and now pictures are being revised because one of our ministers thinks they were 'repulsive'," Dr Gupta said in an e-mailed interview.
In countries like South Africa, picture warnings have worked and anti-tobacco activists feel it would have a similar impact in India.
The new study is the first nationally conducted survey and made world headlines when it was published on February 13 in the New England Journal of Medicine. For the research 900 field workers traveled to 1.1 million homes in all parts of India. The smoking habits of 74,000 smokers who died between 2001 and 2003 was compared to 78,000 existing smokers. The study was carried out by a team of 12 doctors from India, Canada and Great Britain.
The reason why there is such a high rate of deaths in India in spite of the fact that Indians start smoking later than American and Europeans is because Indians have a high rate of TB in rural areas and heart attacks in urban areas that accounts for deaths due to smoking.
"Stopping smoking can be highly effective but only 2% adults quit smoking in India," says Dr Jha. "The best way forward is for people to understand the risk. People should support tobacco control
Feb 20, 2008
DANGEROUS DRUGS HAVE BEEN GLOBALLY DISCARDED BUT ARE AVAILABLE IN INDIA: Suman N
Please Read Very Carefully - INFORM ALL YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY MEMBERS.India has become a dumping ground for banned drugs; also the business forproduction of banned drugs is booming. Plz make sure that u buy drugs only ifprescribed by a doctor (Also, ask which company manufactures it, this would helpto ensure that u get what is prescribed at the Drug Store) and that also from areputed drug store. Not many people know about these banned drugs and consumethem causing a lot of damage to themselves. We forward Jokes and other junk allthe time. This is far more important.Please Make sure u forward it everyone u know.DANGEROUS DRUGS HAVE BEEN GLOBALLY DISCARDED BUT ARE AVAILABLE IN INDIA. Themost common ones are D cold, action 500 & Nimulid.ANALGIN:This is a pain-killer. Reason for ban: Bone marrow depression.Brand name : Novalgin___________________________________________________________CISAPRIDE:Acidity, constipation. Reason for ban : irregular heartbeatBrand name : Ciza, Syspride____________________________________________________________DROPERIDOL:Anti-depressant. Reason for ban : Irregular heartbeat.Brand name : Droperol______________________________________________________________FURAZOLIDONE:Antidiarrhoeal.. Reason for ban : Cancer.Brand name : Furoxone, Lomofen_____________________________________________________________NIMESULIDE:Painkiller, fever. Reason for ban : Liver failure.Brand name : Nise, Nimulid________________________________________________________________________NITROFURAZONE:Antibacterial cream.Reason for ban :Cancer..Brand name : Furacin________________________________________________________________________PHENOLPHTHALEIN:Laxative. Reason for ban : Cancer.Brand name : Agarol________________________________________________________________________PHENYLPROPANOLAMINE:cold and cough. Reason for ban : stroke.Brand name : D'cold, Vicks Action-500________________________________________________________________________OXYPHENBUTAZONE:Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Reason for ban : Bone marrow depression.Brand name : Sioril_______________________________________________________________________PIPERAZINE:Anti-worms. Reason for ban : Nerve damage.Brand name : Piperazine________________________________________________________________________QUINIODOCHLOR:Anti-diarrhoeal. Reason for ban : Damage to sight.Brand name : Enteroquinol
Beware of Garbage Trucks:vamsi.Gogineni
How often do you let other people's nonsense change your mood? Do you let a baddriver, rude waiter, curt boss, or an insensitive colleagueruin your day? Unless you're a robot, you are bound to blow your top off. However, the mark of a sucessful person is how quickly he or shecan get back his or her focus on what's important.Sixteen years ago, I learned this lesson. I learn it in the back of a New YorkCity taxi cab. Here's what happen.I hopped in a taxi, and we took off for Grand Central Station. We were drivingin the right lane when, all of a sudden, a black car jumped outof a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes,skidded, and missed the other car's back end by just inches!The driver of the other car, the guy wh! o almost caused a big accident, whippedhis head around and he started yelling bad words at us.My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean he was reallyfriendly. So, I said, "Why did you do that? This guy almostruined your car and sent us to the hospital!"And this is when my taxi driver told me what I now called, 'The Law of theGarbage Truck'.Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full offrustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. Astheir garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. If they happen to dump iton you, don't take it personally.You just smile, wave, wish them well, and moved on. You'll be happier if youdid that rather than fight them.So this was it: 'The Law of the Garbage Truck'.I started thinking, how often do I let garbage trucks run right over me? And howoften do I take the! ir garbage and spread it to otherpeople: at work, at home, on the street? It was that day I said, "I'm not goingto do it anymore." I see garbage trucks everywhere andeveryday. I see the load they're carrying. I see them coming to drop it off. And like my taxi driver, I don't make it a personal thing; Ijust smile, wave, wish them well, and I move on.Good leaders know they have to be ready for their next meeting. Good parentsknow they have to welcome their kids home from school with hugsand kisses. Teachers and parents know that they have to be fully present and attheir best for the people they care about.The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take overtheir day. What about you? What would happen in your life, startingtoday, if you let more garbage trucks pass you by?Here's my bet. You'll be happier.So ... love the people who treat you ! right.Forget about the ones who don't.Believe that every thing happens for a reason.If you get a chance, TAKE IT!If it changes your life, LET IT!Nobody said it would be easy ....They just promised it would be WORTH IT
Feb 19, 2008
Fidel Castro: Revolutionary of the 20th century
Fidel Castro, who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States from a guerrilla uprising and defied attempts to oust him by 10 U.S. presidents, retired on Tuesday after almost half a century at Cuba's helm.
The bearded revolutionary, whose cigar-smoking guerrillas ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, has not appeared in public for 19 months since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to hand over power to brother Raul Castro on July 31, 2006.
Castro, 81, has kept himself in the minds of Cubans, however, through a prolific flow of sick bed articles that ranged from denunciations of the U.S. war in Iraq to claiming that U.S. capitalism threatens the survival of humanity.
He said on Tuesday he would not return to lead his country, closing one chapter of the 20th century.
Vilified by opponents as a totalitarian dictator, Castro is admired in many Third World nations for standing up to the United States and providing free education and health care.
The Jesuit-educated lawyer and charismatic orator sought to transform Cuba into an egalitarian society and achieved health and literacy levels on a par with industrialized nations.
But critics, led by the United States and the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who left to live abroad, maintained that he turned the Caribbean island into a police state and his rejection of free enterprise ruined the economy.
Castro survived a CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, assassination attempts, Washington's longest trade embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union that for three decades supplied Cuba with everything from guns to oil and butter.
"I'm really happy to reach 80. I never expected it, not least having a neighbor -- the greatest power in the world -- trying to kill me every day," he said on July 21, 2006 at a summit of South American presidents in Argentina, where crowds greeted him like a rock star.
Anti-globalization youths the world over saw the leftist firebrand as a hero along with revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara, his Argentine-born comrade-in-arms.
Castro caught the imagination of the left by pitting his small country against the United States and declaring Cuba a Marxist state even before the Berlin Wall was erected.
His brazen risk-taking took the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when he allowed Moscow to place ballistic missiles in Cuba, leading to a 13-day stand-off between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in one of the most dangerous episodes of the Cold War.
Castro supported guerrilla groups in Latin America and sent more than 350,000 Cubans troops to fight in Angola, where they defeated South African forces, leading to the independence of Namibia and hastening the end of apartheid.
POST-SOVIET CRISIS
But the loss of billions of dollars in subsidies from Moscow after the Soviet collapse plunged Cuba into severe economic crisis in the early 1990s.
Social gains were undermined and widespread hardship sowed discontent that triggered a renewed exodus of tens of thousands of rafters to Florida -- just 90 miles away -- in search of a better life.
The crisis forced Castro to grudgingly open up Cuba to foreign investment and tourism, and legalize the currency of his enemy, the U.S. dollar.
In the last years of his rule, Castro tried to grapple with some of Cuba's glaring failures -- decrepit housing, poor transport, power outages and corruption -- while denying his critics a voice in the West's last communist society.
Castro won friends by sending 30,000 Cuban doctors abroad to treat the poor, mainly in Venezuela, but also as far afield as Pakistan, Indonesia and East Timor, while training thousands of doctors from developing counties in Cuba free of charge.
Cuba won annual votes condemning the U.S. embargo at the United Nations backed by all but a handful of U.S. allies.
Castro, who gave up smoking cigars in 1985, stamped his image on history by thumping the lectern during lengthy tirades against imperialism and capitalism or striding at the head of mass marches in his trademark military fatigues.
Cubans call him simply "Fidel." Seventy-percent of them were born after 1959 and have known no other leader. Until he fell ill, Castro was omnipresent in their lives through hours-long speeches and nonstop public activity, but he has not allowed statues of himself or streets named after him.
His pace slowed after fracturing a knee in a serious tumble after a speech in October 2004 seen live on television.
In 2006, the health of the man who said he had survived 638 assassination plots caved in. He underwent life-threatening operations to stop intestinal bleeding and infection. Pictures showed the once robust leader had lost weight and become gaunt and shuffling.
Castro was born on August 13, 1926, in Biran in eastern Cuba, the son of a Spanish immigrant who became a landowner. His family's farm was the first land Castro ordered confiscated by the state after his revolution.
"History will absolve me," Castro declared during his trial for a near-suicidal assault on July 26, 1953 on the Moncada barracks in the eastern city of Santiago, which launched his revolutionary movement.
In December, 1956, he returned from exile in Mexico on a overcrowded yacht called the "Granma" and landed with 81 followers in eastern Cuba. They were ambushed and only 12 made it to the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains with seven rifles.
The ragtag band of rebels grew into a guerrilla force of several thousand that swept down from the hills in 1958 to drive the dictator Batista from Cuba on New Year's Day 1959.
Fidel Castro's life
NAME: Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz.
Party of Cuba, commander in chief of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. Before announcing he was ill and ceding power to his brother Raul on July 31, 2006, was world's longest-ruling head of government, and leader of one of world's last few communist states. He officially resigned as president on Feb. 19, 2008.
BIRTHDATE: Officially listed as Aug. 13, 1926, in Cuba's Oriente province, although some say he was born year later.
EDUCATION: Attended Roman Catholic schools and University of Havana, where he earned law and social science degrees.
BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: Launched his revolutionary fight with July 26, 1953, attack on military barracks in eastern city of Santiago. He was arrested, then freed under amnesty. Traveled to Mexico to form rebel army, and returned to Cuba with followers aboard small yacht. Most were killed or captured, but Castro and small group escaped into eastern mountains to establish stronghold and seized power when dictator Fulgencio Batista fled New Year's Day 1959.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION: Emerged as head of new government and quickly gained nearly absolute power. All American businesses eventually expropriated and Cuba was declared socialist state in April 1961, on eve of disastrous U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles. United States cut all trade with Cuba as island allied with Soviet Union, leading to October 1962 missile crisis that brought world to brink of nuclear war. For three decades, Cuba was Soviet ally and remained alienated from United States after communism collapsed in eastern Europe.
FAMILY: Married Mirta Diaz-Balart in 1948; son, Fidel Felix Castro Diaz-Balart, born in 1949; divorced in 1955. Although Castro never confirmed remarrying, reportedly wed former schoolteacher Dalia Soto del Valle and had five sons. Also reportedly had several other children out of wedlock.
QUOTE — "Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!"
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